basic laws of emotional physics

simple but powerful truths that help us understand why courage is both transformational and rare.

1. If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability.

2. Once we fall in the service of being brave, we can never go back.

During the process of rising, we sometimes find ourselves homesick for a place that no longer exists. We want to go back to that moment before we walked into the arena, but there's nowhere to go back to. What makes this more difficult is that now we have a new level of awareness about what it means to be brave. We can't fake it anymore. We now know when we're showing up and when we're hiding out, when we are living our values and when we are not. Our new awareness can also be invigorating -- it can reignite our sense of purpose and remind us of our commitment to wholeheartedness. Straddling the tension that lies between wanting to go back to the moment before we risked and fell and being pulled forward to even greater courage is an in escapable part of rising strong.

3. This journey belongs to no one but you; however, no one successfully goes it alone.

4. We're wired for story.

5. Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.

6. Rising strong is the same process whether you're navigating personal or professional struggles.

7. Comparative suffering is a function of fear and scarcity.

8. You can't engineer an emotional, vulnerable, and courageous process into an easy, one-size-fits-all formula.

9. Courage is contagious.

10. Rising strong is a spiritual practice.

-- Rising Strong, by Brene Brown.